Nature Reserve & Biological Station
Herpetological Research
Every night from September to March, our team heads into the rainforest to find, identify and track the frogs, salamanders, snakes and lizards of the Chocó Cloudforest. This project was born in January 2025, with the goal of building one of the region's few long-term datasets on these secretive animals — following how their populations shift, how land-use change affects them, and where and why snakebites happen. Our data and experience is directly used towards feeding international databases, publications and environmental education.
A widespread glassfrog throughout the Thumbes Ecoregion. An amazing species, often found near water whos heart you can see beating!
Bolitoglossa sima, thats right!! We have arboreal salamanders!
A widespread glassfrog throughout the Thumbes Ecoregion. An amazing species, often found near water whos heart you can see beating!
Annual Monitoring
The reserve turned out to be extraordinarily rich in amphibians and reptiles, so in 2025 we set up six trail transects to track them properly — how many there are, how big the populations are, and how they shift year to year. Our very first three-month season delivered 350 individuals across 29 species, each one identified, weighed, measured, aged and sexed where possible.
We use visual encounter survey distance sampling: walking standardized transects at a set pace and recording everything we spot. From that we estimate population sizes and densities — one of the simplest and most effective ways to monitor these animals at fine scale.
Our data goes straight to the Ecuadorian Ministry of Environment and international databases like GBIF, feeding directly into IUCN assessments — so what you record in the field genuinely ends up shaping conservation decisions.
Viper Focus
On top of the transects, we PIT-tag every viper we find. For its size, Ecuador has a staggering diversity of vipers — many barely studied, some a serious threat to public health. To understand when and where snakebites happen, we first have to understand how these snakes move, breed and structure their populations.
So alongside transect data we use capture-mark-recapture (CMR): every tagged snake we re-encounter sharpens our population estimates and lets us follow the health, growth and movement of individual animals over time.
Future Opportunities
Our current research efforts are largely based around the natural history of Ecuadors Herpetofauna. We hope to add projects targeting acoustic monitoring of frogs, chytrid investigations and several other projects using molecular methods in the future.
We will also engage in public outreach projects to better protect people and animals.
Ethical Handling
We work by one simple principle: keep stress on the animal to a minimum, and get the most scientific value out of every encounter.
That's why we design multi-faceted surveys — answering several research questions in a single encounter — always following internationally accepted animal-handling protocols and continually refining our methods to get better data while disturbing animals as little as possible.
Are you interested in joining our herpetological research team?
Want to join our herpetology team? There are three ways in, depending on where you're at:
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Intern - join our ongoing research through a Tropical Field Studies & Conservation. Best if you want hands-on field experience and skills for your CV.
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Research trainee - design and run your own research question in the reserve (January–March). Ideal for students and early-career biologists working towards a thesis or first project.
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Visitor - short on time? Come see the work up close and meet some of the incredible species of Un poco del Chocó.
Whichever route you take, you'll learn to run night surveys, safely be around snakes, identify Chocóan herpetofauna, and collect research-grade data.
From our Blog....
Publications:
Preliminary Insights into the Spatial Ecology of Bothrops asper and Bothrops osbornei in Northwestern Ecuador
Alexander Neugebauer, Lauren Webster and Nicole Büttner 2025; Conference: SEH2025, 23rd European Congress of Herpetology, 8.-12. Sept. 2025, Bonn; DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.29744.42248
Diaphorolepis wagneri (Humpback Shadow Snake). Maxiumum size.
Lauren Webster, Alexander Neugebauer and Nicole Büttner 2025; Herpetological Review 56(2) p. 212, 2025
